Video: Assigning colors with the Eyedropper tool

In this exercise I'm going to show you how to assign colors to a gradient mesh using the Eyedropper tool, and this is one of the best uses for the Eyedropper tool in all of Illustrator. I've gone ahead and saved my progress so far as A real mesh.ai. Notice these icons up here, by the way, you can see that my mesh is currently selected, but you can switch back and forth between the Clipping Path that contains the mesh which is the rectangle and the mesh itself using these two icons up here in the Control palette. So click on Edit Clipping Path to select the rectangle, and then to select the contents, which would be the mesh in our case, click on Edit Contents, and you'll gain access to the mesh. So another way to select the mesh here inside of Illustrator.

Knowing the fundamentals of drawing and reshaping paths is only part of the story. In Illustrator CS4 One-on-One: Advanced, the second of the popular One-on-One series, computer graphics expert Deke McClelland covers some of Illustrator's most powerful and least understood features. He shows how to merge simple shapes to create complex ones with the Pathfinder palette, as well as align paths to create schematic illustrations. Deke explains how to paint fluid, multicolor fills with blends, and the new and improved gradient tool. He explores seamlessly repeating tile patterns, blobs and brushes, and imported images. He also dives into one of the deepest features in all of Illustrator, transparency. Exercise files accompany the tutorial.

Assigning colors with the Eyedropper tool

In this exercise I'm going to show you how to assign colors to a gradient meshusing the Eyedropper tool, and this is one of the best uses for the Eyedroppertool in all of Illustrator.I've gone ahead and saved my progress so far as A real mesh.ai. Notice theseicons up here, by the way, you can see that my mesh is currently selected, butyou can switch back and forth between the Clipping Path that contains the meshwhich is the rectangle and the mesh itself using these two icons up here in the Control palette.So click on Edit Clipping Path to select the rectangle, and then to select thecontents, which would be the mesh in our case, click on Edit Contents, andyou'll gain access to the mesh. So another way to select the mesh here inside of Illustrator.

All right, I'm going to edit another row now. So I'm going to grab my Lassotool once again and I'm going to go ahead and select this row right there likeso, and now I have these points active. So how do I go about changing the colorof those points using the Eyedropper? Well, there are a lot of differentoptions available to you.For one thing, you can click on an object, just to go ahead and lift its color.For example, I could click on this frame to change all those points to brown.Of course, I don't want to do that, but I could. Now what if you want to liftthe color that's already assigned inside of the Gradient Mesh? Well, you mightfigure that you can go ahead and click on a point or click on some other colorinside of the Gradient Mesh, but you can't. Because when you click on theGradient Mesh, Illustrator isn't just seeing one color. It's seeing a ton ofcolors all over the place.

So instead what you want to do is you want to press the Shift key and what theShift key does is it isolates just that color that the Eyedropper is seeing atany given location, go ahead and Shift- click in order to assign that color tothe selected points. That works not only within the gradient mesh itself, soyou can lift colors from one portion of the gradient mesh and put them in adifferent portion of the gradient mesh, which is great. You can rob Peter topay Paul. That's awesome.But you could also lift colors from let's say a gradient, not by clicking onceagain, but by Shift-clicking in order to for example, lift this color in thecreature's skull here and apply it to the selected points.

Now things get a little dicer here inside of Illustrator CS4, because it's beensome strange behavioral change, when you are trying to lift colors from theoriginal background template. So I'm going to go ahead and twirl open thattemplate for a moment and here is what we'll try. I'm going to Ctrl-click orCommand-click on the eyeball from the backdrop in order to switch it to theOutline Mode so that we can see through it.What I'd like to do is, let's say, lift this red right here. But if I click onthe red, notice that I just lifted sort of a pale green color and then if ICtrl-click or Command-click on that eyeball again, sure enough I just went inand applied pale green to this row, and that's certainly not what I want.

So what in the world went wrong? Well, let's Ctrl-click or Command-click on that eyeball again.What's happening here, and incidentally I'll tell you. If you Shift-click, it doesn't get any better. So Shift- clicking, we are still getting the pale green.You can see it up here in the Color Guide palette. You can see it over here atthe bottom of the toolbox as well.What Illustrator is doing is it seeing this path in the background. So it'sseeing through the group to the path, so you could unlock the Paint layer, andyou can turn that path off so that it's not interfering with things. Then youdon't even have to Shift-click. You can just click inside of the art, and nowI've gone ahead and lifted that color of red that I just clicked on there, andto confirm I'll Ctrl-click or Command- click on the eyeball and for the backdropand you could see that I added that red color.

So that's one way to work. I'm going to Ctrl-click or Command-click again so Ican see through the artwork. Here is another way to work, and it doesn't makeany sense, and my apologies upfront for potentially confusing you, but I wantyou to know all of your options.If you want to make sure that you're still seeing this path, so you don't haveto sacrifice a portion of your artwork in order to work inside of it, go aheadand turn on the eyeball for that path again, so it's visible. Then twirl openthis group right here, and twirl open that group. These are the groups thatcontain the actual linked file, which is the imported pixel based artwork,since this was a digital photograph at one point in time. I'm going to go aheadand grab that linked file and I'm going to drag it all the way out of the group, like so.

Now the group just contains this Clipping Path. Let's go ahead and twirl theGroup in the Trash. And now what you'd do is you can't click because clickingdoesn't make any change at this point. Why? I have no idea. Because it justworked a moment ago when the image was inside the Clipping Path, but now it doesn't.So instead what you do is you Shift- click and you know it works, because youcan keep an eye on the color that's populating the bottom of the toolbox rightthere. So Shift-click in order to lift a color from the painting, if you'regoing to work this way, if you're going to take the painting out of it'sClipping Path. Then Ctrl-click or Command-click on the eyeball once again, andyou'll see that sure enough I replaced those selected colors with yellow.

Now that's not all. There is one more thing you can do. Notice that we havepoints, of course, that we've been modifying. We've been modifying the selectedpoints. Well, you can also modify this interior region, which Adobe'sdocumentation calls the Patch. A little word of warning about Adobe'sdocumentation, which you can get by going to the Help menu and you can chooseIllustrator Help and you can see the documentation. It happens to be reallyinaccurate were gradients are concerned. Gradient and Gradient Meshes and itdoesn't really document a lot of new things.

So I'm going to tell you how it really works. They tell you something that justdoesn't work frankly, and I always think it's helpful to know really what'sgoing on. So this is other technique you can take advantage of where theEyedropper is concerned. Notice if you press and hold the Alt key or the Optionkey on the Mac, the Eyedropper flips, so it's pointing the other direction andit's full instead of empty.So it switches from an Eyedropper that lifts things, when you press the Alt orOption key, to a kind of syringe that's putting color into things. So theeasiest way to plop a color into a patch, which is this region right here, hereis what you do. Go ahead and deselect everything by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A,Command+Shift+A on the Mac, then go to one of your palettes and select a colorthat you want to work with. Let's go with violet once again, since we canreally see it inside of this artwork.

Then you want to go ahead and show your artwork once again. So you need to makea color active. That's a big step here and that becomes a color that theEyedropper is going to infuse, that the syringe is going to pump out. But youhave to have the artwork deselected before you select the color, becauseotherwise you're going to modify some portion of the artwork.So having done that, now let's go ahead and twirl open backdrop, and I'm goingto twirl open group, and I'm going to meatball the mesh. The easiest way to do that.Now I'm going to go ahead and press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac.

Now Adobe's documentation will tell you that you can click in the center ofthis patch, you can't really. What you can do is you can either click on apoint, if you want to, if you just want to infuse that point with color. Or youcan Alt-click or Option-click on one of the lines, like so and that will infusethat entire line there with color, line between the two anchor points. Youcould Alt-click or Option-click here and then you could Alt-click orOption-click there. So it doesn't matter what the angle of the line is. You canjust go ahead and associate color with it.So just remember, if you want to lift the color, click with the Eyedropper andthat will change the color of the selected point. If clicking doesn't work, ifit doesn't produce any results, then try Shift-clicking instead. And then ifyou want to use the Eyedropper as a syringe and pump color into something, andthis works whether you're working with a Gradient Mesh or not. It just happensto be more useful with Gradient Mesh. Then you press the Alt or Option key andclick with the Eyedropper tool.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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